


The Only Time I Miss You Is Every Single Day

by Zee



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Anal Sex, Break Up, Future Fic, Getting Back Together, M/M, Magic Cabeswater Lube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:14:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t possible, but there he was, Ronan Lynch on his doorstep, a fine dusting of snow on his close-shaven head and a duffel bag in his hand. He shouldered his way past Adam, who was holding the door open and staring dumbly, and said, “It’s fucking freezing out, move your ass.”</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>After Adam and Ronan have gotten together and then broken up, Ronan visits Adam at college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Time I Miss You Is Every Single Day

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Our Hearts Are Wrong" by Jessica Lea Mayfield. Many thanks to ouroboros for the beta.

It was a Friday night in Cambridge, and Adam wasn’t thinking about Henrietta. He had a twenty-page research paper for his comparative literature class for which he barely had an outline, and it was due on Monday. He had a mid-term in biology to study for and a miserable amount of reading to do for his political science class. He wasn’t imagining going to Nino’s back home, surrounded by Aglionby boys and ready to bother Blue. He wasn’t thinking about driving in the Pig and struggling to make the car’s crappy heating system work in the middle of February.

He couldn’t help but think about the conversations he could overhear from down the hall, other kids in his dorm drinking and laughing and shouting in the hallways. He knew that his suitemates were both out tonight, at a party across campus. He could have gone with them, but from what little experience he had with Harvard parties he knew that he likely wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

It was getting close to ten pm and he was thinking longingly of throwing in the towel for the night when his phone buzzed. It was Ronan, and Adam’s first thought was to ignore it; Ronan had texted him a lot right after they’d first broken up, and then those texts slowed to a trickle. These days he never texted to say anything important—it was always some bullshit insult or non-sequitur. But he hadn’t heard from Ronan since he’d gone back to Henrietta over Christmas, so he looked at the message.

_Get to your front door,_ was all it said. Adam’s heart did a complicated maneuver that ended in incredulity. Ronan couldn’t be here. Ronan didn’t exist in this world of studying and snow and distinguished brick buildings.

But why say get to the front door, otherwise? Adam didn’t actually think before standing, he just made for the door, barely remembering to grab his suite keys before rushing out into the hallway and down the stairs.

He arrived at the front door breathless. It wasn’t possible, but there he was, Ronan Lynch on his doorstep, a fine dusting of snow on his close-shaven head and a duffel bag in his hand. He shouldered his way past Adam, who was holding the door open and staring dumbly, and said, “It’s fucking freezing out, move your ass.”

“Ronan,” Adam said, trying to make this make sense. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Parrish,” Ronan said in response, giving him a curt nod. This affectation, Ronan calling him by his last name, was something Ronan had only recently returned to. He’d stopped during their short-lived relationship, then started again after they broke up over the summer. It still stung a little, hearing it. “I came to visit you, what the fuck does it look like?”

Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. Ronan was standing in the middle of his dorm common room and he looked so unbelievably out-of-place that it was a miracle Adam’s eyes could even develop the picture. “Without warning? Without _asking?_ For how long? I don’t even have anywhere for you to sleep.”

“I’ll sleep on the floor if I have to, dumbass. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Ronan came over to Adam, slinging an arm over his shoulders, and Adam couldn’t stop himself from stiffening. They hadn’t shared many easy, friendly touches like this lately. “And I didn’t ask because I wanted to surprise you, a feat which I have fucking achieved.”

“I was busy,” Adam said, his voice feeble to his own ears. “I was working.”

“When aren’t you working, you hopeless square. Come on, I’ve never been in a dorm before, show me around.”

Ronan’s arm was warm on Adam’s shoulder, his thumb brushing Adam’s bicep. Adam shrugged him off. “Fine. But if you’re going to stick around, don’t expect me to entertain you. I really do have shit to do.”

Ronan didn’t even bother with a reply, just flapped a hand at Adam and gestured for him to go on ahead, up the stairs. Adam sighed and complied, trudging up the two flights to his floor with Ronan behind him, oddly quiet.

Mostly Adam was still trying to reconcile Ronan’s presence. He hadn’t been prepared for this, and that bothered him. He could feel the back of his neck prickling with the desire to touch Ronan, to return that one-armed hug and verify that he was real. When he’d first arrived at Harvard in the Fall, he had often tried to imagine Gansey or Ronan or Blue or Noah here with him, attending his classes, walking with him through the fall leaves, rolling their eyes at the New England snobbery. That tendency had faded over the months, to the point where it was his life in Henrietta that seemed far away and unreal rather than the reverse, and when he’d returned to Virginia over the holidays he’d found himself grafting Harvard onto everything instead.

Which was not to say that he’d built a life for himself up here, not really. Not like the kind he’d had, not with the kind of people he’d had. His life was his studies. He worked at one of the campus bookshops and between that and his classes, he didn’t have time for much else. Adam had been getting along fine, telling himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t need friendship or adventure or Cabeswater if he had Harvard, and for the most part it had been true.

And now Ronan was here to fuck it all up. Gansey had visited once last semester from Princeton, but of course Gansey blended right in and also respected Adam’s work and study schedule; it had been like he suddenly had a school friend, not like his life outside of school was barging in. Ronan was an entirely different story.

“Spartan,” Ronan said when Adam opened the door to the suite he shared with Ben and Nigel. “But I guess it’s still a step up from your shitty apartment.”

Adam snorted. He was far too used to Ronan to let the remark sting. “It does the job. Student housing isn’t supposed to be glamorous.”

Ronan gave him a little smirk at that. “You have a couch. That’s good, I won’t have to sleep on the floor.”

The last time they’d slept in the same room, they’d also been sleeping in the same bed. Adam shoved this thought viciously down. “Sure. I don’t have any spare pillows or blankets, but I can ask around, I’m sure someone does.”

“Whatever.” Ronan nodded at the one door in the suite that didn’t have any posters or pictures on it. “That your room?”

“Yeah.”

Ronan opened the door and threw his duffel on the floor like it had personally offended him. “Jesus, Parrish, are you living here or just marking time?”

The walls were bare. There was one picture in the room, a small 4x6” photo of the four of them (Noah didn’t exactly photograph well) propped up on Adam’s desk. It had been taken not long before he and Ronan broke up, so it hurt to look at, but it was the only photo of them he had.

Adam resisted the urge to take the photo and lay it facedown on his desk. “You know I don’t care about having a lot of stuff.”

“Right. So.” Ronan turned to him, and for a precious few seconds he let his uncertainty play out on his face, his features wavering and his brows knitting together. “Are you happy to see me?”

Adam wasn’t expecting the question. He thought about it before answering, turning Ronan’s unlikely presence over in his mind and looking at him in the context of his new Harvard life.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Cool.” Ronan reached up to tug on his neck, looking away. “Cool,” he said again, muttered under his breath. When he turned back to Adam, his face was again a mask of indifference. “So what bullshit were you working on when I showed up?”

“Here.” Adam grabbed his sheaf of notes and gave them to Ronan, who turned them over in his hand as if they were a completely foreign object. “It’s a paper on The Odyssey and the rhetorical impact of the concept of home.”

“Sounds boring. Bet you could make it interesting, though.”

Even when they’d been dating, Adam had never known what to do when Ronan complimented him, and he didn’t know what to do now. He shrugged, feeling uncomfortable in his skin. “Thanks, I guess. I don’t know that it has to be interesting, it just has to get a decent grade.”

Ronan tossed the notes back onto the desk in a move that was designed to look careless, but ensured that none of the pages slipped and fell off. “I see you’ve still got a stick up your ass about grades. Be less boring, please.”

Adam snorted. Ronan had managed less than a semester at Virginia State University before dropping out. Now Adam wasn’t sure what he was doing, beyond living at the Barns and dreaming up shit and probably missing the hell out of Gansey. It was sad.

Maybe Ronan missed the hell out of him, too. Him showing up here out of the blue certainly seemed like it could be an indication of that.

Ronan moved around Adam’s room like he owned it, sitting on Adam’s bed and leaning back against the wall. “So you don’t have any exciting plans for the evening, huh?”

“You’re plenty of excitement,” Adam said drily, and Ronan lifted an eyebrow. Adam sat backwards on his desk chair, facing him with his legs straddling the chair back. “Why the hell are you here?”

Ronan shrugged. “Valentine’s Day just happened.” He smirked again, his mouth wicked at the corners. “I figured you’d cried your way through the holiday and were horribly lonely. Could use the company, maybe.”

Adam groaned. “Fuck off.” But of course Ronan was as honest as he always was: he’d come because he was concerned about Adam. It made Adam wonder what he’d done or said during his trip back to Henrietta over Christmas to make Ronan worry.

“Did you hear that Blue’s dating a girl now?” Ronan said, and yes, Adam had heard, but he still wanted to hear Ronan’s version of events since he was much closer. Blue was still attending Virginia State and she and Ronan naturally saw more of each other than they did Adam or Gansey.

“Tell me all about it, since you’re clearly dying to,” Adam said. Ronan grinned at him, his smile thin and reflective as glass. 

They talked until long after Adam was accustomed to going to bed. Ben and Nigel returned at around one in the morning, and Nigel had blankets and pillows for Ronan. Adam set him up on the couch, feeling awkward about the whole thing; he could feel Ronan’s eyes on him, and wondered if Ronan was also thinking about how they used to share a bed.

“Goodnight then,” Adam said while Ronan was sitting on the couch, blankets balled at his feet. “I still have to study tomorrow, but maybe in the morning we can do something in the city.”

Ronan laughed, voice soft. “Be my tour guide, Parrish. I want to hear straight-up narration from you, I won’t settle for anything less.”

“We’ll see about that.” Adam couldn’t help but smile and Ronan smiled back, his face clear and vulnerable for a few shining moments. Then it was over, Ronan looking away and hunching up his shoulders. Adam wanted to touch him. Adam wanted a lot of things.

“Goodnight,” Adam said, and closed his bedroom door.

***

Ronan and Adam kissed for the first time on election day, November 4. Adam was accepted into Harvard a month and a half later. They’d had a month and a half of idyllic times, late nights at Adam’s St. Agnes’ apartment and gelato dates and long meandering drives that usually ended at the Barns. Then Adam had gotten the acceptance letter from Harvard and had known, with one look at Ronan’s face, that Ronan hated the thought of him leaving. They didn’t get into many fights that were directly about Harvard, and Ronan tried at first to be supportive, but his anger was always simmering under the surface.

The thing was, it wasn’t just Harvard. Adam wanted out of Henrietta for good, whereas Henrietta was the only place Ronan wanted to be. It wasn’t a conflict that they ever found a way around, and as the spring turned into summer and Adam started getting more and more excited about college and the future, a thousand little petty fights sprung up between them. Adam hated the look in Ronan’s eyes any time the Harvard subject came up, and he hated that when they fought he said things he later regretted, and he hated knowing that he was going to hurt Ronan by leaving. Everything soured. When it came time to move up North, Adam was tired enough to call it. .

And now Ronan was teen feet away on the opposite side of a door. Adam stared up at the ceiling and wondered if Ronan would dream up anything that would be hard to explain to his roommates.

Adam had tried so hard to forget anything had ever happened. He’d thought that he had moved on. Seeing Ronan over Christmas hadn’t been so terrible; they’d avoided each other and communicated through Gansey, much like what their relationship had been back when they’d very first met. It was like an old chronic pain that Adam was just ignoring instead of getting treated. Ronan being here made it fresh again, bleeding anew. 

Seeing Ronan again also brought Cabeswater back, which was more welcome than Ronan himself but still complicated. Adam had gotten used to ignoring the pull at his bones, the latin whispers in the corners of his mind. They were faint, this far from the ley line, but they never went away entirely. 

Cabeswater didn’t truly need him anymore; it just wanted him. Possibly, Adam thought, like Ronan.

These thoughts weren’t any good to have at 2 am. Adam turned over on his side and did his best not to think about Ronan, or Cabeswater, or Blue or Gansey or anyone from Henrietta. He failed miserably, and didn’t fall asleep until the sun was close to coming up. 

***

He woke to the sight of Ronan standing over him. Adam started, pushing back on the bed, and Ronan leaned down until his hands were on either side of Adam’s torso, his nose inches away from Adam’s face.

“Wake the fuck up,” he said, as if Adam needed to be told. For a few seconds Adam couldn’t breathe, what little space between them was toxic, devoid of oxygen, and then Ronan leaned back and stepped away. “I’m fucking bored and you said you’d show me around.”

“Sure,” Adam said, a little breathless. He sat up in bed, acutely aware that he was shirtless and so was Ronan. He’d seen Ronan naked so many times as to get used to the sight, but it was different now that they weren’t together. “You wanna see Harvard Square?”

Ronan shrugged and Adam took it as a yes. Adam swung his legs to get out of bed, and Ronan took a step back to give him space until he was bumping up against the desk.

“We can get breakfast from the cafeteria,” Adam said. “It completely sucks, but they have waffles.”

“So how bad can it be,” Ronan said.

Ben and Nigel were up and about when they left Adam’s room, fully clothed now, and Adam introduced Ronan as a friend from home. It wasn’t inaccurate, it was just far from the whole truth. Ben and Nigel were friendly, inquiring about what Ronan had seen so far and how he liked Massachusetts. It was some time before Adam and Ronan were free to go get waffles.

“Do you have a lot of friends here?” Ronan asked, abrupt over a tower of whipped cream and strawberry sauce. Adam flinched, then hated himself for it.

“Some,” he replied. “I was more focused on getting by in my first semester than anything else.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Right, so you paid more attention to your classes than to your social shit, and now you’re stuck by yourself like a loser.”

Adam glared, but Ronan’s disdain was too familiar to hurt much. “I know what I’m here for. It’s not to make friends.”

Ronan accepted this with a shrug, and they ate the rest of their breakfast in silence. Afterward they fucked around in Harvard Square. Adam took Ronan to his favorite comic book shop, and his favorite sandwich spot. They found a bookstore specializing in poetry that Ronan was surprisingly into, buying several volumes of poets that Adam had never heard of. When Adam asked him about them, he just shrugged and refused to say more about it. They got ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s for lunch and walked around campus in the afternoon, Adam pointing out which buildings he had classes in and any historic tidbits he’d managed to pick up. It was horribly cold, six inches of snow still on the ground, and Adam knew it wasn’t what Ronan was used to (he had only a thin shell of a jacket) but he didn’t complain.

“I recognize that place from _Good Will Hunting_ ,” Ronan said. “I recognize this bullshit from _The Social Network._ Your life is fucking cinematic.”

Adam laughed. “It’s just a school, same as other schools, really. Just a lot more pretentious.”

“Suits you, then,” Ronan said. Adam punched his arm and Ronan laughed, the sound ringing out like a clear church bell. Adam loved that sound. It was different when Ronan laughed genuinely, when he wasn’t snide or sarcastic or vindictive. It sounded boyish and lovely, a glimpse of what he must have been like before Niall’s death.

Adam had gotten lots of those glimpses, in that first month and a half. They’d been scarce after that.

In the afternoon Adam studied and Ronan read some of the poetry books he’d just bought. This was a routine that was familiar to them, doing homework together or Adam doing homework by himself while Ronan watched. It felt nice to be doing it again; Ronan’s presence felt nice, like a puzzle piece that had been missing. 

Adam was surprised by how good he felt at the end of the day, sitting with Ronan in the cafeteria again with hot chocolate in hand. Ronan had ceased to seem so out of place and now seemed somewhat natural in his surroundings, although Adam still felt a bubble of disbelief rise in his chest at the thought that Ronan was really, truly here to visit him. Ronan licked his lip to get some stray whipped cream and Adam felt his own gaze linger there. He hoped Ronan didn’t notice.

“So now what?” Ronan asked, leaning back in his chair so that the front two legs came up off the ground. “What do you do for fun at night?”

Adam shrugged. “There’s a Chinese food place we could go for dinner. After that, not sure. I can see if Ben or Nigel know of anything going on.”

“You mean like a party?” Ronan considered this, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. There was a slight amount of stubble on his neck, caught in the light. “I don’t know about a Harvard party. Is that something _you’d_ like to do?”

Adam was caught off-guard by the question. Ronan wasn’t often that considerate. He shrugged. “Not really, I guess. I’m not a big one for parties. What were you thinking we’d do when you came up here?”

Ronan grinned, and it wasn’t a Ronan grin but a Gansey grin, bright and excited but self-conscious. He let his chair legs clang to the floor and fished out his wallet, his head ducked while he went through his cards before pulling one out, showing it to Adam.

It was a Massachusetts driver’s license that proclaimed Adam to be 22 years old. Adam stared, then started laughing and couldn’t stop. Across from him, Ronan’s grin turned pleased.

“It wasn’t hard to dream up,” Ronan said. “I’ve had one of my own for ages. Figured we could use these to go out tonight and then you could hang onto it, liven up your life a little once I’m gone.”

Adam smiled. Ronan knew he didn’t drink, and so likely wouldn’t get much use out of this, but he appreciated the thought. “So you want me to take you to a bar?”

“I want you to take me to the Good Will Hunting bar. How do you like them apples?”

“You’re obsessed with that movie,” Adam said, laughing. “I don’t think that bar exists, but I can take you to a different student bar if that’s what you want.”

“Sure. I wanna be where the people are.” Ronan sang this last part, and Adam was struck with a vivid mental image of him watching _The Little Mermaid._ It was pretty funny. 

“Wanna see them dancing?” Adam’s mouth felt stuck in a grin. He liked this Ronan, joking around and giving him gifts and being actually friendly. It was so much better than resentful Ronan, cold shoulder Ronan, glaring Ronan. Ronan had been in this kind of good mood all day, only sneering at things when he sensed that Adam wouldn’t mind it, keeping any harsh words to himself. 

He’d been much stiffer around Adam over Christmas, when Adam had been in Henrietta. Adam wondered what changed.

***

Later that night, when Adam was nursing his single beer (he’d started drinking slightly more since starting college; parties were easier to get through with a beer in his hand, but he always stuck to just one) and Ronan was on his third, Adam drummed up the courage to ask.

“You’re being so nice to me now,” he said, his voice raised to carry over the bar noise. “What changed?”

Ronan scowled and rubbed a hand over the top of his head. Adam could see the conflict on his face as he wrestled with how much to give away. Finally, he said, “I got sick of being the asshole. There’s not really a reason for it anymore.”

Adam smiled at him, and Ronan looked away, scowling. “I appreciate that,” he said. “I’ve been the asshole often enough, too, I guess.”

“I always deserved it.” Ronan looked him in the eye now, and the sudden intensity there was startling. The hairs on Adam’s forearms stood on end. “I shouldn’t have given you all that shit for leaving. Seeing you up here, I get it. You’ve worked hard for this.”

Adam swallowed. This was not something they’d ever discussed. “I’m sorry for leaving, though. I miss… I miss Henrietta more than I thought I would.” He hesitated, but then continued recklessly, “I miss you more than I thought I would.”

Ronan held his gaze, his face unreadable. “Yeah. I mean. I wouldn’t fucking be here if I didn’t miss you, would I?”

Adam felt so close to reaching out and touching Ronan’s hand, but he didn’t. His mouth was running free, though, his tongue loosened by beer. “After we broke up, I. I tried hard not to let myself think about you. But it hasn’t worked.” He shut his mouth to keep himself from saying more, how he kept seeing Ronan’s face in strangers around campus, how he thought of Ronan’s voice every time his Latin teacher lectured. He could feel his ears burning red.

Ronan nodded slowly. “You’ve stuck in my mind, too. For a long time I was just fucking pissed at you, but I’m kind of over that. I just wish it hadn’t gone down the way it did.”

“Me too. I felt like I’d lost a friend, and I never wanted that.” They were talking more openly and honestly than they had in months, and Adam’s heart was beating too fast. This was dangerous territory, but if Ronan wasn’t changing the subject neither would he. 

“Same. We were friends first, right?” Ronan smiled, and there was a slightly bitter edge to it, but Adam thought that the bitterness was aimed more at himself than at Adam. “Before I fucked it all up.”

“I think we both contributed our fair share,” Adam said. “Friends?” He held up his beer, and Ronan immediately clinked it with his own.

“Friends,” he said, and they both drank. 

They were quiet for a while before Adam spoke again. “Has there been anyone else, since me?”

This time Ronan looked away. “Yeah,” he said, and Adam waited to hear more, waited to hear that this other person was nothing serious or perhaps _was_ serious or something, anything, but Ronan was not forthcoming. “You?”

“No,” Adam said, and it sounded like an admission of something. He looked away into the dark interior of the bar, but he could feel Ronan’s eyes on him. 

***

“Race you back to Harvard,” Ronan said when they left the bar. They were only four blocks away, and Adam grinned. 

“You’re on,” he said, and Ronan didn’t wait before taking off. Adam sprinted after him, well aware that this was a stupid and dangerous thing to do when the sidewalks were icy. In front of him he could see Ronan slipping and stumbling, and when he turned a corner he almost collided with a pair of young women stepping out of a different bar.

Ronan was about to win the race when an idea occurred to Adam. Still running, he leaned down to scoop up a fistful of snow and lobbed it at Ronan’s back. Ronan stumbled, yelling out “Hey!” and Adam sprinted past him, his arms held high in victory.

“Fuck you, that was dirty,” Ronan snarled, and when Adam looked over his shoulder to laugh at him he got a snowball full in the face. Sputtering, he retaliated and then it was on, the two of them throwing snowballs at each other and missing half the time. Of course Ronan was the one to escalate things, tackling Adam with his arms around Adam’s waist and landing them both on the ground. They rolled around, Ronan trying to shove snow down the neck of Adam’s shirt and Adam doing his best to defend himself while simultaneously trying to get Ronan’s head as snowy as possible. 

They came to a stop with Ronan straddling Adam, and Adam had only a few seconds to look up at Ronan’s face and think _what if_ before Ronan flopped to the side, rolling off of him.

“I’m fucking freezing now,” Ronan said, panting. “You asshole.”

Adam laughed. “I may have started it, but you went with it.”

They stayed like that for a while, lying on their backs and staring up at the night sky. Adam’s heart was hammering in his chest and he was sweating despite the cold. He felt giddy and reckless, feelings he mostly associated with Ronan and hadn’t really experienced since coming to Harvard. He imagined taking Ronan’s hand, or rolling over to press his body against his and kissing him. He shook his head to clear it, but the images were still there, burned into his brain. 

Ronan stood up then, and Adam followed. It was a short walk back to Adam’s dorm, but they were both wet and cold. Ronan swore about it, his shoulders hunched up to brace against the wind. “This weather is bullshit, I can’t believe this is what you put up with every single day.”

Before he could think better of it, Adam was putting an arm around Ronan, hugging him close and rubbing his shoulder. Before he could second-guess the action, Ronan leaned into the touch. He smelled like home. “I don’t want to say you get used to it, because I don’t think it’s really possible to get used to cold like this, but it becomes part of your routine.”

Adam found himself reluctant to let go of Ronan, but he did. They walked in silence, tracking footprints through the fresh snow that was still falling. It was strange to see Ronan in the snow; he had flakes on his head and his nose and cheeks were pink. His mouth was, too.

Adam blinked and looked away, trying to shake off his feelings. It made sense, he supposed, that the attraction would still be there; that was one thing that had never been absent from their relationship. And it was a rush to have Ronan be nice to him again, to have that friendship back. That was all this was: the happiness of an old-new friendship back in his life, and a physical attraction that he was probably just stuck with for good. It didn’t mean anything.

Ben and Nigel appeared to still be gone when they got back to Adam’s suite. They changed into dry clothes and Ronan dropped down onto the couch, glancing up at Adam. “I’m still wide awake. You want to watch a movie or something?”

“Sure. Let me get my laptop.” Adam went to his room and leaned against his desk, out of Ronan’s line of sight. Something in his chest had been pulled tight ever since their conversation in the bar, and he’d stared at the breadth of Ronan’s shoulders as they had walked up the stairs of the dorm. Maybe the beer in his system was affecting him more than he thought. 

He grabbed his laptop. He kind of wanted to be alone, to think about what he was feeling and figure it out, but he also wasn’t ready to say goodnight just yet. 

He queued up an action movie, which Ronan acquiesced to with a shrug. They watched most of it on opposite ends of the couch, and Adam felt himself cataloguing each time Ronan laughed or widened his eyes or leaned forward. 

His thoughts were a jumbled mess and each one was focused on Ronan and he had no idea if Ronan was thinking of him in the same way. Ronan wasn’t acting like he’d come here to try and get Adam back. The conversation about their relationship aside, he was acting like Adam’s friend, like the past year never happened. 

Adam knew what the wise thing to do would be. He knew that he should take what he was feeling and bottle it down until it seeped away into the Boston snow. He’d had his chance at Ronan Lynch and he’d turned away, broken it off, let the fledgling thing between them die on the vine. It wasn’t right to ask Ronan to give him another chance, just because Ronan was suddenly here and Adam felt flooded with life in a way he hadn’t since leaving Henrietta. 

But it was as difficult as it had always been to do the wise thing around Ronan. By the time the end credits rolled, Adam couldn’t blame the roiling in his stomach on alcohol anymore. He was sober as daylight, and still he watched himself reaching out a hand to touch the base of Ronan’s skull, his palm fitting against the soft hair there.

He was very aware that he was making a decision that was potentially bad. He didn’t have any idea what he was doing, and usually that would prevent him from doing the thing in question, but right now he was making a deliberate choice to put aside his hesitancy and do things the way Ronan usually did them. 

Ronan went still. For a long time there wasn’t a sound in the room, and it occurred to Adam how awful it would be for Ben or Nigel to return at this moment. But the suite was still theirs, with no one interrupting or giving Adam an excuse to back off. 

“Adam,” Ronan said eventually, his voice scratchy. “Don’t fuck with me on this.” 

“You know I wouldn’t,” Adam said, his own voice just as fucked. Ronan turned just enough to look him in the eye, not dislodging Adam’s hand. Adam stroked his fingers up and down deliberately. and felt it when Ronan shuddered.

“So--?” Ronan said, and Adam closed his eyes and leaned forward. Ronan’s mouth was as soft as he remembered. 

Ronan only let the kiss happen for a few seconds before he pulled back. “ _Adam_ ,” he said again, sounding entirely unlike himself. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Adam squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “I don’t know.”

He felt Ronan shake his head against his hand. “It’s not like you to do anything without a plan first.”

That caught Adam off-guard and he laughed, utterly breathless. He opened his eyes and met Ronan’s gaze, staring into his eyes. “No,” he agreed. “I just--I want you.”

He expected it to be enough. It always had been, in the past. But Ronan was pulling back, his eyebrows coming together in a frown. “That’s it? You spend a little time with me again and decide that making out would be a great idea?”

“I--I thought you would want--”

It was the wrong thing to say. Ronan drew back, shifting until he was seated at the very end of the couch, far from Adam. “You thought I’d just be here for you, whenever you wanted.”

“ _No,_ ” Adam said. “It’s not like that. I didn’t think anything, I just--I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed the fuck out of you,” Ronan said, and for a second Adam thought it meant that things were going to be all right. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t know you, too. Are you serious about this?”

Fuck. “I--”

“It’s a simple question, Parrish.” Adam could hear Ronan’s voice break and he hated it. He wanted to fix this, but he felt as helpless as he’d felt the day he’d seen Ronan die in St. Agnes. Lacking the proper tools. “Are you saying you want to give it another shot? Or are you just fucking around?”

Adam felt paralyzed. He stayed silent for a beat too long and Ronan took it as rejection, his lip curling up and his body language closing in. 

“Go sleep in your own bed,” Ronan said, final. Adam felt a thousand words bubble up in his throat, but nothing that would fix this; nothing that could convey the tangled mess of emotions coursing through him. 

He didn’t want to leave it like this. He remembered the fight when they’d broken up: Ronan had reached for him and he’d stepped back, folding his arms over his chest. They had been in his apartment above St. Agnes, and he’d told Ronan to leave while tears began forming at the corners of his eyes. Ronan had begged him to take it back, and Adam was willing to bet it was the only time Ronan had begged in front of anyone in years. But he’d kept a careful hold of his anger and closed the door behind Ronan too hard as he left, watching him drive away through his living room window. 

He wasn’t capable of matching someone else’s anger with humility. Wasn’t capable of begging. He found himself standing, his body stiff as he left for his bedroom without a word. He could feel Ronan’s eyes on him as he left, and it was cold as he undressed for bed, cold as he climbed under the covers and pulled them up to his chin. He told himself it was for the best.

***

They didn’t talk much the next day as Ronan packed up his things to go. It was awkward after the night before, and Adam didn’t want it to be but he didn’t know how to fix things. He tried to be as kind as possible to make up for his fuck up the night before, and Ronan accepted this with a tightness to his jaw. When it was time for Ronan to leave, Adam offered to walk him to the T station, but Ronan declined this offer with a wave of his hand.

“Thanks for coming,” Adam said. Ronan looked tense and unhappy, and he hated leaving things like this. “I mean that. It’s been… It was really good to have you here.”

Ronan nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice clipped. 

On an impulse, Adam stepped forward and hugged him. Ronan was stiff at first but then his shoulders slumped and he relaxed, his hands slowly coming up to encircle Adam’s back.

Adam stepped quickly back before Ronan could accuse him of having any inappropriate intentions. “I’ll see you again soon, hopefully.”

Ronan sighed, and when he met Adam’s eyes he looked tired. “Sure,” he said, and Adam wanted to ask what he could do to make this right, what he could do to be given another chance, but the words stuck in his throat. 

He watched Ronan go, trudging through the snow with his duffel bag and thin jacket. It wasn’t snowing anymore. He still had a mid-term to study for. 

Sitting at his desk, he tried to concentrate but couldn’t help the feeling that there was a mean laugh and a sharp grin just out of his line of sight. 

***

Spring Break fell in the beginning of March. There was never any doubt that he was going to go back to Henrietta. Gansey had apparently been invited on someone’s trip to Florida, but at the last minute elected to return to Henrietta as well. Adam was comforted by knowing that they were both still tied there, choosing the boring comforts of home over the prospect of making new friends and seeing new places. 

Adam had been trying not to think about Ronan, but it was like trying to ignore an open wound. Ronan’s words played behind his eyes like a movie reel: _It’s not like you do anything without a plan first. Are you serious about this? Are you saying you want to give it another shot?_

Ronan had been right: Adam hadn’t had a plan, not that night. He’d gone in blind, without knowing anything about where his own head was at, let alone Ronan’s, and it had cost him. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

He’d been doing a lot of thinking. Playing the past over and over again for himself like a broken record, and paying attention to when and how he missed Ronan. You couldn’t miss someone like this if they weren’t a part of you, nestled close to your heart like bone and blood. 

Over Spring Break, he stayed at 300 Fox Way and Gansey, of course, stayed at Monmouth. The first night Adam arrived in Henrietta, he drove the Hondayota (he’d kept the car but left it in Henrietta--there wasn’t much point to having it at Harvard) to Monmouth late at night. He hoped that Gansey was asleep, but figured he wasn’t, and this was correct: the light was clearly on in the main room when Adam pulled up, and when he knocked on the door, Gansey was the one who answered. 

“Adam?” Gansey blinked at him, owlish and slow. They’d just seen each other a few hours before, going out for gelato as a reunited gang. 

“Hi,” Adam said. “I came to grab Ronan.”

A look of surprise flashed quickly on Gansey’s features before he quashed it, stepping back so Adam could see Ronan sitting next to the Henrietta replica. Ronan stood, a beer bottle dangling from his fingertips.

“As long as you don’t need me to drive,” Ronan drawled. Adam could tell already that he was pretending to be drunker than he was.

“‘Course not,” Adam said. “Come on.”

Ronan scowled at him but he came, stepping gingerly over the town square and stopping when he was next to Gansey. “What do you want?”

“To take you out,” Adam said. “Come on, I don’t have all night.”

Ronan arched an eyebrow, but he followed when Adam turned to walk back down the steps.

“Have fun, don’t stay out too late,” Gansey called, and Adam flashed him a smile over his shoulder. He could tell that Gansey was worried, and Adam wanted to tell him that everything would be fine, but that was just his hope, not a certainty. 

Adam took Ronan to Cabeswater. He had planned this carefully, and wanted a place where Ronan felt comfortable, where Ronan trusted him. Ronan didn’t say anything until they were parking, the wheels of the Hondayota rolling to a stop. “All right, so what the fuck is this about?”

Adam turned the key, killing the engine. The night was silent around them, only the faint rustling of trees beneath the moonlight. It was still a little cold, and Ronan was only wearing a tank top, no jacket. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”

“I say a lot of things. Be more specific.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “What you said when you visited me. When we--when I kissed you.”

Ronan went entirely still, staring hard at the passenger door mirror. He didn’t say anything.

“You were right when you said that I wasn’t really thinking, at the time. Seeing you stirred up a lot of feelings and I was just acting on that, it was impulsive and maybe a little stupid. But I’ve been turning it over in my mind since then, and.”

This was where it got difficult. Ronan was still giving him nothing, his face turned away, his shoulders tense. Adam thought of Ronan rejecting him again and wanted to get out of the car and run into the forest, get lost in it and let it swallow him up. He swallowed and forced himself to continue. 

“The thing is, I think--I think breaking up was a mistake. I’m still--it’s not over, not for me. Ronan. Look at me.”

Ronan did so, and Adam sucked in a breath at the rawness on his face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” he said, his voice slow and wrecked.

It took everything Adam had to push the words out, but once he started he couldn’t stop. “I’m still in love with you. I never stopped. I only ended things because all we ever did was fight and I was leaving anyway and it was too painful, but I’m not over--”

The rest of his words were lost, because Ronan was throwing himself across the car and kissing him. His mouth was hot and hard and Adam ached. He grabbed Ronan’s shoulder and kissed back and held on.

***

The idea to get out of the car seemed to occur to them both in unison, both of them simultaneously leaning back from the kiss and reaching for their respective doors. Adam stepped out and his heel sunk into moss. The trees told them that it was good to have the magician back.

Ronan came around the car and took Adam’s hand and they walked into the forest together. Around them, Cabeswater purred. Tree limbs reached out as they walked past, and the temperature grew warmer until it was a perfect summer night, any trace of winter chill gone.

Adam still had more things to say about their relationship, before Ronan had interrupted him with a kiss. He tugged on Ronan’s hand and Ronan stopped, looking at Adam over his shoulder with a curious look on his face. 

“I still have more to say,” Adam said. “I feel like we broke up because we were fighting all the time and I don’t want that kind of relationship anymore.”

“Me neither,” Ronan said immediately. He turned to face Adam and squeezed his hand. “I can be less of a dickhead, I promise.”

Adam smiled at that. “It’s not about you not being a dickhead. I think we were fighting because we were both unhappy because I was going to leave, but if we’re prepared to deal with that--”

“I’ll deal with it,” Ronan said. “I can do the long-distance thing and not blame you for it.”

“Okay.” Adam couldn’t keep the grin from his face. He leaned in and kissed Ronan, who pressed back against his lips with the force of a dreaming forest. 

They kept walking. Ronan was leading them in the opposite direction from where his mother stayed. They found the creek, followed it. Adam’s body felt light and full of air, but at the same time he felt more present in this moment than he’d ever felt at Harvard. Everything was surreal except for the warm touch of Ronan’s palm in his own. 

Ronan stopped walking and let go of Adam’s hand, turning around to face him. He cupped both Adam’s cheeks and leaned in, kissing him softer this time. He kept it slow, pulling back each time Adam tried to deepen the kisses, like he was trying to prove some sort of point. It frustrated Adam and he twisted his fingers in the material of Ronan’s shirt, yanking him in.

“Come on,” Adam said, reaching up to cup the curve of Ronan’s head. He opened his mouth and Ronan accepted his tongue, scraping his teeth over it. It was familiar and new all at once, and it felt like this mattered more than their first kiss had. That first kiss had been giddy and eager and this was deliberate, both of them exploring terrain that they knew but had forgotten. 

Ronan took a step back and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it up and over his head and tossing it on the ground. Adam followed suit with his own t-shirt, and around them Cabeswater sighed its approval. Ronan was removing his pants, too, so that was what Adam did, his breath hitching as he undid his fly and pushed his pants down along with his boxers.

They were both naked and it was impossible to ignore the fact that the forest was paying attention. Adam met Ronan’s eyes and Ronan’s cheeks were flushed, his pupils blown. 

“We’re doing this here?” Ronan said, making the obvious into a question. They never had before; they’d always had the St. Agnes apartment to go to, or Monmouth occasionally when Gansey wasn’t home.

Adam shrugged. “I don’t want to explain to Gansey yet. Do you?”

Ronan shook his head. He crossed the distance between them and kissed him again, letting his lips trail down Adam’s cheek and jawline until he was biting at Adam’s neck. Adam thought about showing up at school with a hickey and found that he didn’t mind. 

Ronan stepped in until their bodies were flush against each other. Adam’s erection brushed Ronan’s, sending hot sparks through his body. Adam reached down to touch him and was rewarded with Ronan’s full-body shudder. He wrapped his hand around Ronan’s cock and squeezed hard the way he knew Ronan liked, and Ronan hissed a curse against Adam’s skin.

“I want you to fuck me,” Ronan said, his hands in white-knuckle grip on Adam’s biceps, and yes, Adam could do that. He wanted all of Ronan, right here and now, wanted to stake a claim that couldn’t easily be forgotten. 

“Get on your knees,” he said, and it was the biggest rush when Ronan immediately complied, looking up at Adam with a worshipful look on his eyes. Adam cupped his cheek and let his thumb rest on Ronan’s bottom lip. He knew that he would suck his cock if he asked him to, knew how much Ronan liked it, but that wasn’t what he wanted right now. 

He moved until he was kneeling behind Ronan, his hands on Ronan’s hips. He pressed the flat of his palm to Ronan’s shoulder blades and pushed until Ronan was falling onto his hands, on all fours. Adam loved Ronan like this, open and giving, trusting in a way he never seemed to display to anyone but Adam. 

Adam dipped a hand into the creek with one hand, forming a question for the forest. Sure enough, his fingers came out of the water slick with oil, not wet with water. Adam smiled his thanks at the trees and reached beneath Ronan, pressing one slick finger against his hole. Ronan hissed and spread his legs wider, and Adam pushed his finger in.

Ronan was so tight. Adam bent over his back and dropped kisses on the skin he could reach, working a second finger in. Ronan moaned, his spine arching and his hips pushing back onto Adam’s hand. Adam didn’t know how he had managed to live without this for almost seven months, didn’t know how he could have pushed this away when it had always been so good. He bit at the skin of Ronan’s back and Ronan cursed and the trees made wordless excited noises. It must like seeing its’ magician take its greywaren apart, piece by loving piece. 

Adam reached back into the water for more oil and wrapped his hand around his dick, pumping himself a few times and getting himself slick. “You ready?” he asked, although he knew what the answer would be.

“I’m fucking gagging for it, you know that, get on with it,” Ronan said, a hitch in his voice making his snarl into something far more vulnerable. Adam bit him again before leaning back to position himself. 

Pressing his cock into Ronan felt simultaneously like the greatest miracle and heaviest sin. Adam bit his lip, the pain focusing him, and pushed in as slowly as he could handle, which was maybe not as slow as Ronan would have preferred. But Ronan didn’t complain, just bent his head and spat out more beautiful curses and took what Adam wanted to give him.

Adam pushed in all the way and took a long, shuddering breath. He could feel sweat forming on his upper lip and he wanted to do this right, wanted to make it last, but it felt impossible when Ronan was just too damn good. He pulled out a little and rocked in again, and Ronan moved with him, pushing back onto Adam’s cock. 

Adam began to fuck him in earnest, going faster and harder when Ronan made loud noises of approval. Around them the wind picked up speed, the trees speaking latin too muddled and fast for Adam to translate. 

“I--I still love you, too,” Ronan said, loud over the noises the forest made. “I didn’t say it before, when you said it, but I do--it’s why I was so scared when you kissed me in Boston--”

“I know, Ronan,” Adam said. He stooped low until his forehead was resting on the back of Ronan’s neck, and kissed him there. “I know.”

“Please just don’t stop,” Ronan said. Adam squeezed his hip and slammed into him, not holding back. He raked his other hand down Ronan’s back, scraping with his nails the way he knew Ronan liked. 

Fucking Ronan felt so good that Adam knew he wasn’t going to last long. He managed a few more erratic thrusts before he was coming, bent low over Ronan’s back with his mouth open in a wordless cry. The trees echoed his own climax back at him, singing in latin and magnifying the burble of the creek and the sound of the wind. 

Ronan finished himself off while Adam was still growing soft inside him, panting and barely keeping himself from slumping all of his body weight onto Ronan’s back. “F-fuck,” Ronan stuttered out as he came, spattering the forest floor with white. 

Adam pulled out of him and collapsed on his back next to Ronan, staring up at what stars he could see through the trees. Ronan laid down on his stomach, his head rolled to the side so he could look at Adam. Adam found Ronan’s hand and clasped it, squeezing their palms together.

They didn’t say anything for a long while, both of them panting and staring at each other. Adam could feel sweat cooling on his sides, and Ronan’s face was still red. He looked beautiful. He looked like a natural part of the forest, like he could sink into the moss beneath them. Adam closed his eyes and listened to the creek and the trees and the wind.

***

Spring Break didn’t last. Adam and Ronan didn’t get too many chances to be alone because neither of them had the heart to turn Blue or Gansey or Noah down when they wanted to hang out. The weather was getting warmer and all five of them were hungry for each other. It didn’t seem right to steal either of them away from Gansey when this was the first time they’d seen each other since Christmas. 

Still, they took what moments they could. Adam moved his things from 300 Fox Way to Ronan’s room and stayed with him for the remainder of the break. Sleeping in Ronan’s bed again felt both natural and new, and he kept waking up to find honeysuckle and rhododendron blossoms scattered over the both of them. When he asked Ronan what he was dreaming about, Ronan shrugged and said Springtime.

“Why don’t I drive you up?” Ronan asked him on their second-to-last night together. “It’d be a fuck of a lot better than taking the train.” 

Adam frowned. “It’s like, nine hours one way. I can’t ask that of you.”

“Which is why I’m offering, dumbass.”

Adam pulled a face at him. They were lying on Ronan’s bed facing each other, and Ronan was running a finger idly up and down Adam’s bicep. “You really want to?”

“Yeah. Get some quality time before we have to say goodbye again.” Ronan’s eyes cut away, avoiding Adam’s glance like he often did whenever he said something vulnerable. 

“It’s not goodbye for good,” Adam said, reminding him. “You can visit me any time. Or I can try to come down here.”

“Nah, I’m the one with time on my hands. I wouldn’t want to drag you away from your studies.” Ronan’s finger moved to Adam’s collarbone, tracing it delicately. “Can I come see you in April?”

“Of course. There’s no need to ask.” Adam leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Ronan’s forehead, and felt Ronan relax against him. 

The drive up to Cambridge was more enjoyable than Adam had thought it would be. They took the BMW and Ronan drove most of the way with Adam taking the last stretch. They took turns picking the music, and Adam revealed that he still had the mix tape that Ronan had made for the Hondayota back before they got together. Listening to it gave Adam a strange feeling, a fierce nostalgia mixed with gratitude that the past was in the past, and maybe he and Ronan were done fucking things up.

They arrived at Adam’s dorm late Saturday, and of course Adam invited Ronan to spend the night. The dorm bed was narrow, and they had to sleep basically on top of each other, spooned tightly with Adam’s back to the wall. Adam didn’t really mind.

Sunday morning they ate breakfast together before Ronan got ready to leave. Adam could tell he didn’t want to go: he was scowling at everything and his body language was tight and forceful. He looked as resentful of the world as he had when they were at Aglionby. 

“It’ll be April before you know it,” Adam told him. They were next to the BMW, saying goodbye. 

“Whatever,” Ronan said. He ran a hand over his head, scrubbing at his nonexistent hair. “Take care, I guess. Study a fucking lot and show these snobs how it’s done.”

“I’ll do my best.” 

Ronan pulled him into a hug, and after a beat or two Adam hugged him back, allowing himself to bury his nose in Ronan’s shoulder and inhale deeply. Ronan smelled like the road still, as he was wearing the same clothes he had yesterday. He also smelled like Adam’s bed. It sparked a longing in him, a desire to find Ronan and keep him even though he was right here in Adam’s arms.

“Call me when you get home,” Adam said when they released each other. Ronan nodded curtly, and Adam thought he could see Ronan’s eyes glisten before Ronan closed his eyes and kissed him.

Adam kissed back, cupping Ronan’s jaw in his hand. “I’ll call,” Ronan said, and Adam nodded, let his forehead rest against Ronan’s before he kissed him again, deepening it, and Ronan sighed into his mouth.

“I’ll see you,” Adam said, reluctant to step away. Ronan gave him a smile, as slow and real as a sunrise, and Adam’s chest loosened until he felt like his ribs could float away. He returned the smile with teeth, and let himself feel good.


End file.
